After the Dawn
by Xehra
Summary: Dawn rises after the Battle of Helm's Deep


Title: After the Dawn  
  
Author: Xehra (xehra1@hotmail.com)   
  
Rating: PG for death and morbidity  
  
Category: Angst  
  
Setting: Post-Helm's Deep, movie canon (not Tolkien's)  
  
Summary: Dawn rises after the battle of Helm's Deep  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own, nor claim to, the characters of Middle Earth. They belong to the Professor. I'm just borrowing, and I make no coin  
  
Feedback: Please! Always appreciated - to the above address  
  
Archive: FF.net and The Wood's Library  
  
Thanks: To Bridget the lovely beta  
  
Author's Note: Yes, another angsty fic dwelling on the death of Haldir. What can I say? It's cheaper than therapy...  
  
***  
  
After the Dawn  
  
***  
  
Gandalf had come, as he had promised, on the fifth day. As the sun had risen in the East he had brought hope and help, turning the tide of the battle.  
  
The slaughter that followed was terrible; most of the Rohirrim took a vicious joy in hacking down their enemy to the last Uruk. Gimli, blood dripping from his axe, had looked up from his own grisly work to hear them singing. It was a fierce song, ringing harshly across the killing fields in the bright morning.   
  
And when the last blade had risen and fallen, bringing death to the final orc, they stopped.  
  
There was a strange kind of silence that stretched then. Those still standing looked about them in wonderment, as if waking from a red dream. Blinking, they looked about their feet and saw clearly for the first time the carnage they had wrought. Swords dropped from nerveless fingers and hardened warriors fell to their knees, weeping.  
  
Blood, so much blood and death. Bodies lay where they fell, corpses with eyes that stared up at the blue sky, pain and terror frozen on their faces.  
  
Making his way through it all was Legolas, still gripping his long knives tightly. The savage joy that had played across his features the night before was gone. Now his face was set in a grim mask, his eyes hard. There was blood in his hair.  
  
Gimli nodded to his friend. No words were spoken; both sensed this was not the time to settle the score in their orc-counting game. They stood together for a time, looking out across the field towards the now-shattered Deeping Wall. Among the bodies that carpeted the distance, lone figures strode with spears, speeding the death of those whom it would claim anyway.  
  
"We should go to the Keep," said Legolas simply after a time.  
  
The dwarf sighed.   
  
"Aye," he replied gruffly, shouldering his axe.  
  
As they came to the bottom of the causeway, Legolas saw Aragorn standing above on the battlements. Elessar was standing looking down at the wall, where most of the Elves had fallen. Legolas did not want to look. He did not want to see the still bodies of his kin, lying in the mud next to the orcs that had killed them.  
  
Haldir was amongst them, he knew. He didn't want to think about the Lorien Captain. About the mud on his armour and the axe wound that gaped in his back. Resolutely Legolas turned his face away, striding ahead.  
  
Gimli, however, did not follow. He stood at the bottom of the causeway, seemingly undecided about something. After a few moments he gave a sort of grunt and started towards the breach in the wall.  
  
"Gimli?" his friend called after him, not understanding.  
  
The dwarf stopped and turned.   
  
"They cannot just lie here," he said simply.  
  
He strode on, stepping with difficultly over the large Uruks that littered the ground. He came at last to where the Elves lay next to their foes and stopped, looking about searchingly. A length of crimson caught his eye, a different shade of red from the gore that surrounded him.  
  
It was Haldir's cape. Someone had brought his body down from the top of the wall and laid him there. Helmless, his pale hair fell over his face but his eyes were closed.  
  
Gimli looked about helplessly then walked away for a few paces. Reaching down, he began to tug at a large shield that lay beneath a giant Uruk-hai. Guessing the dwarf's mind, Legolas joined him, rolling the stinking carcass away.  
  
By now others had come to see what the dwarf and the Elf were doing there among the slain. Silently, the Rohirrim stood around the gap in the wall, seeing clearly for the first time what Gimli had; immortals sent early to Mandos' Halls, their beauty taken from the world so brutally.  
  
As Legolas and Gimli prepared to lift the body of Haldir onto the shield, the ranks of warriors around them parted to reveal Aragorn. Wordlessly, the Dúnedan bent to help them, brushing Haldir's hair from his cold face.  
  
His sword was brought forth and laid on his chest. They unfastened the magnificent, muddied crimson cloak and draped it over him before the dwarf and the Elf reached down and lifted their burden.  
  
Together they bore the body of Haldir of Lorien towards the citadel, raised high on the shield. Aragorn followed, head bent in benediction. Some of the Rohirrim fell in behind him, forming an honour guard for the one who had come to them in their hour of need.  
  
Those who remained behind at the wall were not unmoved. They, however, paid their respect differently, bending their backs to the task of moving the bodies of the Elves.   
  
None of those on the battlements above remarked on it, but Rohirric songs in years to come would tell of how the fallen Lorien bowmen were attended to before their own dead. Of how they had come to their aid when the night was darkest, and how their hair had been stained with blood, and the mud of Helm's Deep.  
  
END 


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